Germany and Austria will be the second and third countries that Kaia will visit outside of her home country in the U.S. Chris really found the idea of spending a third Thanksgiving in a row in New York so unbearable that he made this trip happen. This will be our first Thanksgiving as a family of three, and the first European Thanksgiving we will celebrate with our baby Kaia. The flight over went decently well. Kaia had some short periods of fussiness, but overall, she seemed quite calm and adjusted well. She had some moments at the Christmas market where she got a little upset, likely because she wasn’t getting enough food and was confused what time it was. And I was still on edge about the idea of giving her too many foods with added salt and sugar, but I realized quickly that I needed to let it go. It’s not her everyday eating, I told myself. All her home meals with be added-salt free, or very little; this is just a holiday away from home and will be a short period of time in the grand scheme of things; this will not define her eating habits moving forward. I had to keep telling myself this to prevent myself from feeling like a bad mom.

Oh, and another fun thing happened: it’s also our first overseas trip where for the very first time, our one checked bag got delayed; the airline just left it in Charlotte and said they’d have it sent over the next day. What fun, and of course it had to happen with our first trip with a baby. EU law protects fliers, though, and requires airlines to cover the cost of items that were necessary in those checked bags, up to 1,300 euros. So I also had to suck it up and got Kaia some jarred food and pouches, just to ensure she was getting nutrients from solid food and no added salt/sugar. At least in the EU, the food laws are also stricter, so I know that the quality of these jarred and pouch foods is higher than back in the U.S.

When people think of “baby food,” they often think of the commercial baby food pureed, as made famous and normalized by Gerber. So when you think about baby-appropriate food in flight, the only stuff they are going to give you, if anything, will be commercially made and jarred pureed foods like fruit or meat and gravy, which all sound quite disgusting if you ask me. We were told erroneous information by the American Airlines agent over the phone, who said that when prompted on their website, I can choose either my food or my baby’s food (commercial food) since I have an infant-in-lap ticket. The option allows you to choose either/or, not “and,” so I chose my adult food and was told by the agent that the baby food would be in-flight since they would know I’d have an infant in lap given my ticket type. Well, that was wrong: they told me not only that there was no food for the baby inflight, but also that I should always choose the baby food when presented with the option online, because there would always be more than enough adult meals on any given flight.

Either way, I wasn’t pleased. The food seemed too salty to give Kaia in flight. I have been pretty strict with only a couple exceptions about making sure that no salt is added to food she eats, but this food would be WAY too salty. It was even salty for me! Not to mention I really had no easy or safe way to feed her without a proper high chair (or ANY chair) to sit her down in. So we just had her drink breast milk in flight that I pumped. Wouldn’t it be nice if airlines actually did pre-prepare baby appropriate food as opposed to commercial food — if they just steamed or roasted some fruits and vegetables until easily pierce-able with a fork, along some rice or noodles, and just didn’t add any salt or sugar? How hard could that possibly be for them? I suppose that is just too much effort for an airline to make for a family.

A generous friend has offered to lend us her YoYo stroller for our Australia trip. Well, because we got it so far in advance, we’re actually going to take it to Germany, as well. The caveat to having a stroller that is so lightweight, easy to fold, and put in an overhead bin on an airplane? The fact that the basket under the seat can barely hold anything. It cannot even hold the diaper bag, of all things! Granted, I was never planning to do an entire grocery haul and store it under the YoYo, but geez, the storage is pretty horrendous on this. We met our friends in Jackson Heights for lunch to pick up the stroller from them, and so because of that, we took Kaia in the baby carrier to Queens and back home in the YoYo. They also gave us a bunch of their daughter’s old clothes (that are pretty much in brand new condition, and if worn before, only once!!) in a huge and heavy bag. And we also bought some groceries while out there. So we were struggling to carry all this stuff back on our backs and in our hands because barely anything fit in the stroller basket. It’s also why I limited how many things I bought to bring back.

I guess that’s why this is meant to be a travel stroller and not a primary stroller: even in our own backyard, this was annoying to use when carrying items that are not JUST the baby.

Last night, we stopped by a grocery store to pick up a couple snacks and small food items for Kaia. When I went to ring up my items at the register, the cashier asked me if I had a rewards card. I said no, since I’m not from the area. He asked me where we were traveling from, and I said New York City.

“New York City, huh?” he replied with wide eyes. “Been hearing a lot about the Big Apple on the news. It sounds like the crime is out of control there! How are you handling all that?”

I wrinkled my brow as I paid for my items and took them. “There’s crime everywhere. New York is a great place to live. I love it. You shouldn’t believe everything you hear on the news all the time. It’s a bit of a warped picture.”

Inevitably, whenever we travel to smaller towns, some person will make an ignorant comment about how dirty and crime-filled big cities are, or a specific critique of New York. I’d assume most of these people have never even been to New York, or if they have, they may have visited once or twice at most. They’ll assume we “put up” with rather than willingly choose to live in New York. They’ll assume we don’t like it. But we choose to be in New York. We enjoy living there. Certainly no one has forced us to live there. It must be quite a revelation for them to hear that we actually like New York and would prefer living there to wherever they hell they live. It is an active choice to choose New York City as your place of residence. Delaware has had lots of nice, friendly people so far, so I’m not going knock anyone here. But I wouldn’t willingly choose to live in this state, even with all the friendliness, the additional space, and the pretty autumn foliage.

On Saturday evening, we received a frustrating notification that our flight on Sunday morning had been cancelled. Because we were booked on two separate bookings since my flight was paid for by my work, we also got placed on two separate flights to go back to New York, which was not good for many reasons, but especially because Kaia would be with us. So I called American Airlines and eventually changed both of our flights to be on business back to New York on a redeye flight Sunday night, which would return Monday morning. The last time I’d been on a redeye was when I had to come back to New York for Chris’s citizenship ceremony in 2018, and I felt miserable when I landed and for a few days after. It’s funny how our bodies change: I used to take red-eyes regularly through college to come back to Boston, as well as in my early to mid-twenties, and I’d always hit the ground running and never even needed to nap when I got back. Well, this time was very different: I’m 36 years old now (which means I have aged and my body cannot handle that type of travel anymore regularly), plus I’m traveling with an infant in lap, so a red-eye flight has a very different meaning now. Plus, everyone knows that a red-eye flight from California to New York is too short to sleep properly, even when you do have the privilege of a lay-flat bed in business class. Even privilege and money cannot get you the perfect red-eye flight back.

We got to the airport early so that we could get comfortable, get Kaia fed and settled to sleep as soon as possible, and so I could pump a little earlier so I would not need to pump in flight. And while she did fuss initially when we boarded the plane, mainly because of the sounds and bright lights, she did amazingly well throughout the flight. She slept soundly on top of me… which is good because at least one of us slept well. While I love having her on me, it made it impossible for me to sleep. I really just had my eyes closed the whole time. We came back early this morning and got back to the apartment relatively quickly, but I was so beat when we got back. I ended up having to take a nap in the afternoon just for a little rest. It still wasn’t enough, though.

It’s like now, my body is recovering from the red-eye travel, while my mind is recovering from being with my parents in their house of terror. So all of me needs recovery time now, which will likely take a few days at least.

About a week ago, my business class flight got upgraded to First, so we can actually say now that Kaia’s first flight was not only cross-continental, but it was also in style in the first class cabin. We got our own pod with as much privacy as you can get on a plane. Given Chris was in business class, we moved her back and forth between our seats depending on what was going on (when she was bottle fed or I was pumping, she was with Chris, whereas other times she was with me). She was a little fussy in the morning given we woke her up really early at around 4:30am to get in the car for the airport, and she absolutely hated her diaper change in my pod before takeoff, but after that, she was really like the dream baby in flight: she slept a lot, and when she wasn’t sleeping, she was babbling away, playing with the remote buttons, and exploring things I laid out for her to play with. Kaia got so many compliments from both the flight attendants and other passengers. The thing I was worried about the most in terms of the pressure in her ears never even became a problem: she was sucking away at her pacifier during both takeoff and landing, which I’m sure helped any potential popping.

Pumping milk on the plane was actually much easier than I imagined, but that is hugely because I was in a premium cabin with total privacy. I didn’t need to lock myself up in the bathroom to prime my boobs or connect my pump to my nipples; I could do all of that in my little pod without anyone watching me. The only time I was actually nervous pumping in the air was when I had to disconnect my pump and measure out my milk, hoping to God there was no turbulence that would cause a potential spill. In the end, I lucked out, and everything went perfectly. It was even my biggest pump yet because my gap between pumps was so large — 330ml or 11oz!

When I think about it, though, in practice, traveling as an adult with one baby on the plane would really be hell, especially if you are not in a premium cabin seat. How are you supposed to put luggage in the overhead bin or use the bathroom with a baby that needs to be held or could roll over off the seat? How can you even do something as basic as take your tray out or eat your snack or meal without disturbing a sleeping baby? And PUMPING while on a plane sitting in economy with a baby — alone without a partner?! Forget about it – it would not even be an option!! Parents who fly with their babies alone, just 1:1, are like warriors.